Ex-nazis Listed As Elected Deputies to New West German Parliament

October 23, 1961

BONN (Oct. 22)

The names of some former Nazis appear on the official list of deputies elected to the new West German Bundestag published by the Government Information Office this weekend. They include Hermann Conring, a member of Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic Union from Lower Saxony who was a wartime Nazi provincial commissioner in Groningen, Holland, charged with helping to break the strike of Dutch workers against deportations of Jews.

Two of the former Nazis are deputies of the Free Democratic parties. One is Siegfried Zoglmann, of Dusseldorf, who was a Reich Hitler Youth Leader. The other is Ernst Achenbach of North-Rhine Westphalia, who has been accused of aiding in the organization of the deportation of French Jews, was associated with the neo-Nazi Naumann underground movement after World War II, and is the initiator of a bill for general amnesty for Nazi crimes.

Among the deputies who had served in the last Bundestag, who were associated with the Nazi regime, and who dropped out in the most recent election were four Christian Democratic party members. They are former Refugees Minister Theodor Oberlaender, who was eased out of Chancellor Adenauer’s Cabinet after a lengthy campaign by the opposition Social Democrats; Waldmar Kraft, former SS agricultural expert in occupied Poland; and Pascual Jordan, associated in recent years with HIAG, the organization to aid former SS men.